SEA CREATURES

 

WHALE

We were in the middle of the Indian Ocean and just after first light I went up on deck to turn the gas on.  A degree of paranoia is required when dealing with cooking gas on a yacht, and we would only turn it on just before cooking, and turn it off immediately afterwards.  The gas bottles were stored above deck well aft.  As I opened the gas box to turn the valve, there was a loud “whoosh” from the water, just a couple of feet away.  There, cruising with its nose about a foot from the stern, was what turned out to be a twenty-five or thirty foot Minke whale.  Since we were on a steel boat, his closeness did not cause any concern.  I called Diane (and the cats) to come and see who had come to visit.

 

We sat watching (and attempting conversation) when he suddenly rolled on his side, eyeballed us from six feet away and sounded.  As we moved to go back down below, there came the same “whoosh”, but now from the bow.  There he was, bow-riding, which for a whale is something to see.  Again he did not touch the hull but sat very, very close.  Then again, the roll to the side, eye contact made, and he spouted, but underwater.  Then he sounded again, coming up once more on the stern.  Again the eyeball and the implied message – gotcha!  This went on for over an hour as he cavorted all around the boat, and then, finally, went on his way.

 

I had always been half-heartedly in favour of “:saving the whales” but interacting with one as we did, convinced me that there was a sentient being in there, who knew what was going on (in his world at least) and may not have been too happy about it. 

Epiphany is not too strong a word to describe the event as far as I was concerned.

 

MORE WHALES

Approaching St Helena the weather was moderate to rough with fifteen to twenty feet breaking swells, fortunately from astern.  Out of nowhere, two Bryde’s Whales appeared and proceeded to surf down the waves with us, one to port, and the other to starboard.  They lay only about twenty yards off, formatting perfectly.  Quite intimidating as they were each the size of our yacht.  They stayed for fifteen minutes and then went on about their whale business.  Magnificent.

 

DOLPHINS

We had left it a bit late in the day for the approach to the isolated atoll of Budi Budi but with Diane on the helm, and myself at the masthead we worked our way along the reef looking for the pass that the chart said was there. With the sun getting low, and from dead ahead, visibility was difficult.  Suddenly two dolphins appeared between the reef and us, and stayed there, shepherding us away if we started to close on it.  After some minutes, just as suddenly, they turned sharply to the left, in through the pass and paused to check we had followed.  It is difficult to interpret their actions as anything other than assistance in safely entering the lagoon through the surrounding reef.  We were very grateful.

A very large pod of dolphins overtook us as we ran down through the southern part of the Mocambique Channel.  They were porpoising (appropriately enough) with the whole pod of fifty or sixty jumping ten or more feet clear of the water in a steady stream.  We had them in view for some minutes and watched as they cleared the water and then submerged, again and again.  Every single time there was one dolphin who leaped the highest, but did so upside down.  He just swam the whole time that way.  Very odd, but then there is always one in every crowd.

We were approaching Alor when I noticed dolphins feeding.  They were jumping clear of the water as they apparently made a feeding run from below what we assumed was a large shoal of fish.  As our gaze widened we were in awe of the scene.  Every ten square yards of the ocean, as far as the eye could see in all directions, had a dolphin in the air above it.  As fast as one fell back into the water another became airborne in his place.  I could not guess how many were involved, but certainly some thousands.  Quite surreal.

 

OCTOPUS

I had been sitting on the bottom in about a hundred feet of water waiting for my scuba tank to run out before surfacing.  This was at Nosy Be just off Madagascar.  From the far side of a coral bommie an octopus crawled up, onto the top and regarded me from ten feet away.  I used my bubbles to send “Hello” in Morse Code.  After a pause he scintillated multiple colours back at me and then he paused.  I bubbled back – he scintillated again.  And so on.  There is no doubt in my mind that we were attempting communication.  Neither of us had a clue what the other was saying, but we were trying.  Again, a sentient being with his own view of the world.  Not just an octopus.  Please don’t eat them.

 

PILOT WHALES

Approaching Devil’s Island we went to bed in the foc’s’l but did not sleep.  There was a pod of pilot whales which had been bow riding for most of the late afternoon and they stayed with us.  The problem was that they kept up a steady loud conversation among themselves, back and forth, all night.  We got very little, if any, sleep but enjoyed listening to them, and wished we could understand.

 

BIRD

About half way to the Marquesas from Galapagos a sooty tern came on board.  I came on deck one morning to find him staring back at me from a distance of a foot or so through the hard dodger.  During the day he moved around from time to time and ended up in a protected location on deck on the starboard side.  He stayed for over a week.  I could pat him, and he would take fresh water from me but refused all food.  I expected him to die, as had been the case with other birds in the past.  One morning he was there at 1000 but was gone at 1100.  When I plotted my position at noon, I realized that he had flown away at almost exactly my point of closest approach to the Marquesa Islands.  There is no doubt in my mind that he had hitched a ride most of the way home.